The aim for the GROWNUT (Growing Partnership for Higher Education and Research in Nutritional Epidemiology in DR Congo) partnership is to use a multi-sectorial approach to gather and train a sufficient number of Congolese academics capable of educating postgraduate candidates, who then can promote, initiate and conduct research geared towards reducing the problem of malnutrition. The objectives of the partnership are to:

Increase capacity to deliver high quality education in nutrition epidemiology in Kinshasa School of Public Health, University of Kinshasa (KSPH);

Increase capacity to deliver relevant and high quality research at KSPH;

Establish appropriate infrastructure, policies and systems to ensure capacity to education and research at KSPH.

GROWNUT is a close collaboration between Kinshasa School of Public Health in DRC, Center for Rural Health, University of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa and Centre for International Health, University of Bergen in Norway. The program works closely with PRONANUT, the National Program of Nutrition (Ministry of Health) in order to translate research results into policy; and with community levels in order to transform policy into routine services.

GROWNUT is part of the Norwegian Programme for Capacity Development in Higher Education and Research for Development (NORHED) funded by Norad. The first cohort of GROWNUT-master students started in 2014. By the end of the project (December 2020) – we aim to have about 40 graduated master students in Nutrition Epidemiology and four PhD candidates that have defended their theses.

In June 2019, we had our annual meeting in Kinshasa at Kinshasa School of Public Health, with representatives from Norad, the Norwegian Embassy Office, Centre for Rural Health at University of Kwazulu Natal and from Centre for International Health at UiB.